Wrinkled hearts and velvet kisses
by Inkfire
Summary: Fifteen moments in war and beyond. Fifteen birthday drabbles for echoing noise, in HarryLuna love!


**This is a birthday present for the amazing echoing noise. Fifteen years, fifteen HarryLuna drabbles. For you, girlie! **

**These are thrown in completely random order, hopefully not too repetitive -cringe- and they fit the prompts I picked off WordReference as I went, as well as the Hogwarts Online March 23th Prompt of the Day (_"Life is full of tough choices, isn't it?"_), as far as the tenth one is concerned. Most of them are post-war, for the others the timing should be clear, except for the sixth (Harry is about to leave Bill and Fleur's to break into Gringotts). 100 words each. Enjoy!**

* * *

_**Peaky / quail / counterpoint**_

"You're looking a bit peaky, Harry," says her bright voice from the doorway, "have the Wrackspurts been troubling you?"

He only smiles in response as she glides in. He's been dreaming again, visions from the past, vivid enough to make him quail. His scar is at rest, but his mind won't settle – hindering and exhausting him.

Thankfully, he's got a measure of equilibrium. Luna, the counterpoint to the pain and the anguish, the whirling waves of calm washing over him. Luna who teaches him to live, just live, without fighting.

"Close your eyes."

Trust – and a fleeting kiss.

(_A breath._)

* * *

_**Camouflage / akin / mature / halfwit / short-sighted**_

When they first met, he was an angsty, self-absorbed teenage boy and she a weird and shunned little girl.

People whispered behind both of their backs, when they didn't openly point and laugh. It hurt; it made him blunt and furious, it made her hide and camouflage, shove the pain back beneath a serene smile. Certainly they were akin – only she was more mature.

They thought her a halfwit, short-sighted and judgmental as they were. He thought her an odd girl, that was all – and then went back to mind his own business, his griefs and fears.

Such a waste.

* * *

_**Personified / eagerly / replant **_

Luna Lovegood, he decided, was like the night – was like the moon, and the stars, quiet beauty personified.

She glowed pale and delicate, softly lighting obscurity; she was rest and oblivion or fond recollections, mystery, shadows and yet familiar refuge. Timidly, eagerly, he traced her features and white limbs in the halflight. Their breaths mixed, and their eyes drifted shut.

He could replant hopes, nurture trust in the shelter of her peaceful company. He could see the world, the future, without the fears that tangled up in his lungs. Be himself – just Harry.

He could make it – no. They would.

* * *

_**Relativize / relentless / topicality / aggregate**_

He tuned her off, just watching her talk with a smile playing on his lips. He had long learned to relativize her odd ideas. They weren't annoying at all like people thought: they were whimsical and poetical, shot with such relentless topicality he could have suspected her to make them up, had he not absolutely trusted her ingenuousness – it seemed that no matter the subject broached, she would always have a relevant piece of madness lurking into her head. And they all aggregated into such a vivid and lively view of the world.

"Harry? Are you listening?"

He always was.

* * *

_**Sporting / elf **_

He stood by the grave, wordlessly.

"How sporting of you to gift the elf with a sepulchre, Harry Potter," Griphook had said. Ron had nodded, a jerky, awkward move of his head, looking away – and Hermione had hugged him hard. None of the others commented. They shared the gratefulness – not the grief.

"He can hear the sea everyday from here," a voice said from behind him, making him jump abruptly. Luna stood there with just her smile, quiet and soft. "I'm sure she would have loved the sea," she added, "so restful."

Throat too tight to speak, he only nodded.

* * *

_**Windswept / visible / masking / wildness **_

The night was quiet, so quiet, too peaceful. His heart hammered in his chest, madly.

"Good luck, Harry."

He whirled around, stifling a scream. Luna stood there, in the garden, calmly observing him. She was windswept and barefoot, wide eyes, seemingly too big for her face, fixated on him. And he tensed, hoping that none of his anxiety was visible.

"Good luck with what?"

"Whatever you're planning," she said. "Don't try masking it. I'm not going to pry. Just thought I'd say goodbye."

He blinked as she approached, wildness creeping beneath his skin.

Her lips were velvet soft upon his.

* * *

_**Insouciance / champion / conduction / promisingly **_

"Dance with me," she said, that morning on the Hogwarts grounds.

"There's no music."

"I know that. Dance with me."

Awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her, remembering Parvati and long-gone years of insouciance – being only a champion, and not yet a hero. He scoffed under his breath and she leaned into him, guiding him as they twirled slowly, languidly. He felt an odd conduction, with their bodies so close together, of heat, hope and… something else.

She looked up at him, smiling. Her eyes glinted and her lips called promisingly to him, a deep, powerful pull he couldn't resist.

* * *

_**Heartbeat / smudged / clayey **_

He imagines her in Azkaban.

His heartbeat pounds and his mind twists tormentedly, trying to take in the painful, surreal-sounding idea. Luna in Azkaban, among the Dementors. Luna, this creature of life, of fantasies, of hope, sometimes irrational – smudged with the shadows of this place on her pale face, with its clayey, clammy, heavy mark – thin as Sirius was, with madness in her wide eyes…

She is strong, he thinks in his panic like a mantra. She is strong, she will survive this, she will… She has to.

She does, for she is stronger than he is – stronger than anything.

* * *

_**Year-round / perjury / grueling **_

Year-round, then, he survives.

The thought is funny, ironic, quite offensive, even, to all the people he's seen die his whole life long – most of those for him. He survived the war, being the Chosen One, then an Undesirable – now he's a hero, no less, and he survives still. Perhaps all their high hopes were but delusion and perjury – nobody seems to understand, really, how grueling it is, to carry the responsibility of his own too-full existence, to be a symbol, something huge, and yet nothing. To live, and to move on, when he's never been taught to.

(_She understands._)

* * *

_**Extermination / "Life is full of tough choices, isn't it?"**_

Extermination breathes on the world's lips, out for blood.

The speeches he hears make his skin crawl, truly awful and absolutely justified. Revenge, scream the tortured and the destroyed, who lost their families, who lost their innocence. Ever chivalrous, he tries to stand for justice – and they listen, yet can't forget.

"Life is full of tough choices, isn't it?" Luna says, and he stares at her blankly.

"The Death Eaters made a choice," she goes on, "so did you. So will the courts… It's not your responsibility."

It never occurred to him before not to feel responsible for the war.

* * *

_**Unresolved / sensation / deleted / modesty **_

Of course, afterwards, he lacks a purpose.

Everybody seems to be starting over, building their lives, and he feels something unresolved in the depths of him. Their laughter and joy are echoing through him with a ringing sensation – he cannot connect with them. It's like something in him has been deleted – the ability to live a normal life, perhaps.

"It's not lack of modesty," he tells her one day, breathless with despair. "I'm not like that. I never wanted to be a hero!"

"No you didn't, but you had little chance to be anything else before," she says. "So learn."

* * *

_**Crab apples / whim / fault **_

She shows him her bedroom, her garden, and her world, and he doesn't mention his previous visit.

They lie sprawled upon the grass, and Luna conjures a bowl of crab apples from the nearest tree. She bites into one, the crunching sound deafening, and laughs as he stares up at her.

"Have one!" she urges.

He takes a bite, indulging her whim, of the hard, juicy and acidic fruit; it tastes like temptation, or maybe like youth. He cannot find a fault in this simple moment; he cannot find his fear.

Her teeth glint like little pearls in the sunlight.

* * *

_**Steady / wharf**_

Luna tells him that the world is a thing of beauty and mysteries, and that one should never, ever believe they can tame it – or know what to expect from it.

Luna believes in wonderful creatures and of happiness in little moments, moments that, strung together, shape one's life. She believes in love, in human strength, and in Harry's future.

Somehow, this erratic view, laced with philosophy and fantasies, feels steadier and more promising than anything to him.

If he was looking for a wharf, he's found a boat starting for travels and Luna welcomes him aboard.

(_He climbs in._)

* * *

_**Weft / verity**_

She watches him sleep, holding her breath.

His hair sends shadows over his face and conceals his scar, for now. She likes the sight, the quiet and the peacefulness of the moment.

Harry awake looks at her, often, like she's something sent to him from another world, his salvation. Because she _understands_, he explores the weft of her with that firm belief that she is made of peace, and love, and wonder, and beauty.

He doesn't quite catch the verity of her. Her own fears are stifled, secret as she thrives on happiness. She never forgets.

But she goes on.

* * *

"Luna."

In the middle of the night, they come together without a word.

Her mother lives in the corners of her eyesight and his chest is full of the people who gave their lives. They let the ghosts slip from them though, for a moment, and they are just Harry and Luna in the bedroom with the moon outside, new as two curious children, catching their innocence before it flies away.

They explore and discover, each other and who they are. What is left of them, and what can be born again.

"Harry," she says like it sums everything up.


End file.
